Category Archives: Beauty of Math

If you are fond of classical music, then you have probably heard of Johann Sebastian Bach. He was one of the great composers of the Baroque period. His music was known for its intellectual depth, technical command, and artistic beauty (I copied the last sentence from Wikipedia, lol).

But what will surprise you more is how his music is tied to mathematics. Watch the video below of how playing the music backwards and forwards simultaneously can be visualized using a Moebius Strip.

Tiling is one of the many beautiful patterns that we can see around us. Some of them are man-made and some are created by nature. For example, many modern homes nowadays have tiled floors or even walls. On the other hand, in nature some animals are able to create regular tilings such as shown in the image below. Now why do bees would choose such shape?

Tiling, or popularly known as tessellation in mathematics, is not just beauty for the eyes. It has many interesting mathematical properties. For example, one question that should be asked what are the shapes that can tile a plane? What are the properties of these shapes? What are the properties of polygons that cannot tessellate the plane? Of course these questions had been answered hundreds or perhaps thousands of years ago, but they are a good exercise for the mind to those who haven’t encountered it. They are also good questions for students. Continue reading

Mathematical beauty is most of the time enjoyed and appreciated by those who have knowledge mathematics. It can only be appreciated by the common person in tangible things or perhaps things that can be seen by the naked eye. Symmetry, tessellations, and patterns are several of the mathematical beauty who can be shared by math and non-math persons. Well, let’s add one more: bubbles.

The video above shows how to create soap bubbles polyhedra and other 3d shapes. Some of the polyhedra shown in the video above are tetrahedron, hexahedron, octahedron as well as some truncations. It also shows some strange behavior of bubbles when they are suspended in the air.